Jane Field Part 14

"You'll just spoil them children," said her mother, severely; "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Flora."

Flora tried to draw her face into gravity. "Go right upstairs, children," said she. "It's so funny, I can't help it," she whispered, with another furtive giggle.

"I don't see anything very funny in children's actin' the way they have all dinner-time."

The children thumped merrily over the stairs. It was clear that they stood in no great fear of their mother's chastis.e.m.e.nt. They knew by experience that her hand was very soft, and the force of its fall tempered by mirth and tender considerateness; their grandmother's fleshless and muscular old palm was another matter.

Soon after Flora followed them there was a series of arduous cries, apparently maintained more from a childish sense of the fitness of things than from any actual stress of pain. They soon ceased.

"She ain't half whipped 'em," Mrs. Lowe, who was listening downstairs, said to herself.

The lawyer was in his office; he had intrenched himself there as soon as possible, covering his retreat with the departure of his guests.

Mrs. Field and Lois, removed from it all the distance of tragedy from comedy, were walking up the street to the Maxwell house. Mrs. Field stalked ahead with her resolute stiffness; Lois followed after her, keeping always several paces behind. No matter how often Mrs. Field, sternly conscious of it, slackened her own pace, Lois never gained upon her.

When they reached the gate at the entrance of the Maxwell grounds, and Mrs. Field stopped, Lois spoke up.

"What place is this?" said she, in a defiantly timorous voice.

"The Maxwell house," replied her mother, shortly, turning up the walk.

"Are you going in here?"

"Of course I am."

"Well, I ain't going in one step."

Mrs. Field turned and faced her. "Lois," said she, "if you want to go away an' desert the mother that's showin' herself willin' to die for you, you can."

Lois said not another word. She turned in at the gate, with her eyes fixed upon her mother's face.

"I'll tell you about it when we get up to the house," said her mother, with appealing conciliation.

Lois slunk mutely behind her again. Her eyes were full of the impulse of flight when she watched her mother unlock the house door, but she followed her in.

Her mother led the way into the sitting-room. "Sit down," said she.

And Lois sat down in the nearest chair. She never took her eyes off her mother.

Mrs. Field took off her bonnet and shawl. She folded the shawl carefully in the creases, and laid it on the table. She pulled up a curtain. Then she turned, and confronted steadily her daughter's eyes. The whole house to her was full of the clamor of their questioning. "Now, Lois," said Mrs. Field, "I'm goin' to tell you about this. I s'pose you think it's funny."

"I don't know what to think of it," said Lois, in a dry voice.

"I don't s'pose you do. Well, I'm goin' to tell you. You know, I s'pose, that Mr. Tuxbury took me for your aunt Esther. You heard him call me Mis' Maxwell?"

Lois nodded; her dilated eyes never wavered from her mother's face.

"I s'pose you heard what he was sayin' to me when you come in. Lois, I didn't tell him I was your aunt Esther. The minute I come in, he took me for her, an' Mis' Henry Maxwell come into his office, an' she did, and so did Mr. Tuxbury's sister. I wa'n't goin' to tell them I wa'n't her."

The impulse of flight in Lois' watchful eyes became so strong that it seemed almost to communicate to her muscles. With her face still turned toward her mother, she appeared to be fleeing from her.

Mrs. Field stood her ground stanchly. "No, I wa'n't," she went on.

"An' I'll tell you why. I'm goin' to have that fifteen hundred dollars of your poor father's earnin's that I lent your uncle out of this property, an' this is all the way to do it, an' I'm goin' to do it."

"I thought," gasped Lois--"I thought maybe it belonged to us anyway if Aunt Esther was dead."

"It didn't. The money was all left to old Mr. Maxwell's niece in case Esther died first."

"Couldn't you have asked the lawyer about the fifteen hundred dollars? Wouldn't he have given you some? O mother!"

"I was goin' to if he hadn't took me for her, but it wouldn't have done any good. They wouldn't have been obliged to pay it, an' folks ain't fond of payin' over money when they ain't obliged to. I'd been a fool to have asked him after he took me for her."

"Then--you'd got this--all planned?"

Her mother took her up sharply.

"No, I hadn't got it all planned," said she. "I don't deny it come into my head. I knew how much folks said I looked like Esther, but I didn't go so far as to plan it; there needn't anybody say I did."

"You ain't going to take the money?"

"I'm goin' to take that fifteen hundred dollars out of it."

"Mother, you ain't going to stay here, and make folks think you're Aunt Esther?"

"Yes, I am."

Then all Lois' horror and terror manifested themselves in one cry--"O mother!"

Mrs. Field never flinched. "If you want to act so an' feel so about it, you can," said she. "Your mother is some older than you, an' she knows what is right jest about as well as you can tell her. I've thought it all over. That fifteen hundred dollars was money your poor father worked hard to earn. I lent it to your uncle Edward, an' he lost it. I never see a dollar of it afterward. He never paid me a cent of interest money. It ain't anything more'n fair that I should be paid for it out of his father's property. If poor Esther had lived, the money'd gone to her, an' she'd paid me fast enough. Now the way's opened for me to get it, I ain't goin' to let it go. Talk about it's bein' right, if it ain't right to stoop down an' pick up anybody's just dues, I don't know what right is, for my part."

"Mother!"

"What say?"

"You ain't going to live here in this house, and not go back to Green River?"

"I don't see any need of goin' back to Green River. This is a 'nough sight prettier place than Green River. Now you're down here, I don't see any sense in layin' out money to go back at all. Mandy'll send our things down."

"You don't mean to stay right along here in this house, and not go back to Green River at all?"

"I don't see why it ain't jest as well. You'd better take off your things an' lay down a little while on that sofa there, an' get rested."

Lois seldom cried, but she burst out now in a piteous wail. "O mother," sobbed she, "what does it mean? I can't-- What does it mean?

Oh, I'm so frightened! Mother, you frighten me so! What does it mean?"

Her mother went up to her, and stood close at her side. "Lois," said she, with trembling solemnity, "can't you trust mother?"

"O mother, I don't know! I don't know! You frighten me dreadfully."